I believe the great CEOs understand both business success and personal success. My higher purpose is to disseminate CEO wisdom to help elevate business, the economy and society. My platforms are: host of the nationally syndicated Am/Fm radio show The CEO Show with Robert Reiss, and host of the CEO TV Show. We also produce The CEO Forum magazine, which is received exclusively by the top 10,000 CEOs in America. I recently co-authored, “The Transformative CEO” which was published by McGraw-Hill in 2012. One of my passions is sharing insights by giving keynote speeches on the topic, “What we can learn from America’s top CEOs”.

What CEOs Can Learn From Jeremy Lin

As everyone looks for lessons to understand the Jeremy Lin ‘Linsanity’ phenomenon, I viewed it from my lens of having interviewed 250 CEOs and as a Knicks fan following Jeremy Lin before he became a sensation. So in seeking truth, I decided to crunch some numbers. The results were compelling and revealed that there are definitive lessons CEOs can learn and apply from Jeremy Lin. This article has two parts: first my analysis of Lin with CEO lessons, and second, direct CEO perspective where I talk with Michael Chen, recent CEO of GE Media Finance and President of an NBC News Business, about Jeremy Lin.

1. Identify the Superstar on your bench. An unexpected insight came when I compared the 11 games Jeremy Lin played for the Knicks before his breakthrough with the 11 games he played after February 4th. I calculated points and assists per minute. The finding: In Lin’s 11 games after his breakthrough playing an average of 34 minutes per game he averaged 23.9 points per game and 9.1 assists per game; in his games prior to breakthrough his averages using 34 minutes per game would have been 20.4 points per game and 9.7 assists per game. Net/net, before his breakthrough, Jeremy Lin was already achieving at the same high level, but was just under the radar. To Coach Mike D’Antoni’s credit, the moment Lin had just one great game, he immediately made Lin a starter. The message to CEOs is look under the radar in your organization — analyze P&Ls of overlooked businesses or current smaller untapped markets, seek breakthrough ideas from the depth of your organization, and view carefully potentially overlooked data because there may be a superstar on the bench.

2. Play team ball. When Jeremy Lin took over the point guard position, the Knicks won 9 of 11 games; during the prior games the Knicks lost 9 of 11. And during this turnaround, they were mostly playing without their two perennial all-stars. So what happened? The Knicks created a winning corporate culture. Once a culture is defined, the key to a team is everyone has a role. As it turns out Jeremy Lin’s role as point guard is what I define as a high-leverage position. He orchestrates. Lin’s passing ability immediately made everyone else better, and low percentage shots became high percentage shots. For example, Steve Novak prior to Lin’s leadership was a background character without a defined role averaging only 3 points a game; since February 4th, Novak has averaged 12 points a game off the bench and is a top 5 NBA leader with 46% 3-point shooting percentage, and is now looked upon as an option to take the final shot of the game.

Playing team ball, the Knicks followed their new leader Jeremy Lin’s lead and started playing team defense as well. The Knicks 11 games prior let teams score an average of 96 points per game. The 11 games with Lin leading the Knicks became one of the NBA’s elite teams holding teams to just 90 points per game. Knick fans witnessed something they hadn’t really seen since 1973 when Frazier, Bradley, DeBusschere, Reed, Lucas and Monroe played true team basketball team offense and defense. I have fond memories as a kid sitting with my dad watching the beauty of team basketball, and now I can sit with my kids and witness team ball together. The message to CEOs is that team ball wins, and the first step to team ball is having a defined culture and identifying high-leverage positions whose occupants make everyone else better. Just like a winning coach has 48 minutes of intense team basketball, a winning CEO has each associate successfully playing their roles and integrating them with others every day–playing team ball a full 48 minutes.

To gain further perspective adding to the two insights – identify the super star on your bench and play team ball – following are some questions I asked recent CEO Michael Chen about his take on Jeremy Lin.

Michael, as a recent CEO, what do you think companies can learn from “Linsanity”?

Robert, every corporation probably has 20-30 hidden Jeremy Lin’s in its organization. No, I’m not talking about just Harvard grads or Asian-Americans. I am talking about employees (men/women, diverse/non-diverse) who have the potential to become future leaders, but for one reason or another have yet to be discovered. As corporations get bigger, bureaucracy inevitably creeps in. Sometimes, companies create several layers of management between employees and senior leaders, making it very difficult for these “Jeremy Lin’s” to be discovered. Therefore, companies should create a process that gives potential superstar employees an opportunity to showcase their talents in front of senior leaders. When I was at GE, we created a “Growth Competition” which allowed anyone with an innovative idea to enter the competition. They needed to create a team, develop the concept, and submit a detailed plan to a group of judges, who then decided whether or not it would qualify for a presentation to the Vice Chairman and other leaders of GE. It was like the “American Idol” of finding future business leaders, except our judges were nicer.

What advice would you give the hidden “Jeremy Lin’s” in organizations?

Personal branding is essential. A few years ago, I developed a personal branding model which I call the “4 I’s”: have integrity, make an impact, be inclusive, and inspire people. 1) Have Integrity – As Jeremy Lin has shown to the Knicks, be dependable, trustworthy, accountable, and loyal to the organization. 2) Make an Impact – Whenever you have an opportunity to showcase your talents, give it your all. If you succeed, fantastic. If it doesn’t work out, at least you know you went down swinging. 3) Be Inclusive – Don’t try to do it alone. Like basketball, business is a team sport. Share the ball with others, involve them in the decision making, and help them succeed, and 4) Inspire People – Teams and corporations are looking for leaders who can energize and bring out the best in others. So like Jeremy Lin, be passionate, give others hope and respect, recognize them for the credit they deserve, and always stay humble. He is living proof that the 4 “I’s” Personal branding model works!

Michael, you are an Asian American of Chinese heritage, just like Jeremy Lin. How does it feel that he has become an overnight sensation in the NBA?

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This article is spot on. I loved Michael Chen’s comment “every corporation probably has 20-30 hidden Jeremy Lin’s in it’s organization,” and how talented people can get buried under what I translate as layers of bureaucracy. I think more companies should consider adapting their own version of “Growth Competition” and going back to the basics and recognizing talent is all around us. I really appreciated Mr. Chen’s personal branding model the “4 I’s”…it’s certainly a worthwhile model to live by. In the closing statement where Mr. Chen’s says “he [Jeremy Lin] will have his off nights but I do believe he is the real deal, and the Knicks will be rewarded over the long term…” I think that is an admirable quality in a CEO as well, that you have to be in it for the long haul, recognizing there will be off days and that you don’t give up the ship or on people for those off days….Good luck Jeremy Lin you’ve got a lot of people rooting for you.

Thanks for your comment and feedback. The key thing is people are never as bad as their worst days and never as good as their best days so judgement of how Jeremy Lin does this season should not be based on his performance in one game, or his own personal stats, but a reflection after the season is over on whether or not he made the NY Knicks better.

CEO at Ben and Jerry’s needs to read this piece. They were a little “Lin Competent” when it came to the person that selected recent ingredients. However, being a great brand they apologized immediately. http://bit.ly/wv8XzP

It’s more difficult to discover Jeremy Lin within coorporation due to beauracracy. Here is why: Lin given a chance and he shine in front of the world, he has the entire world seeing his performance and no one can take away from him – every move he made is recorded on tape. In coorporation the task distribution, credit recognization and compensation structure are very different, thus motivation are different too. That’s why you don’t see Microsoft invent anything in the market these days. Doesn’t mean they don’t have capable engineers, in fact they have more than plenty. Some true genius aren’t that team oriented or good at interpersonal skills, such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg even Bill Gates. People around them will tell you how stink their personality is. Coopration manager usually too lazy to manage the ego inflated genius and use the true talent to their own advantage. I remember I fully capable to deliver oustanding solution that help a billion dollar revenue company, however it turn out several department involve in nasty political dog fight. Yes if I got a fair share of the success like NBA player I will have the gut to fight all the way to the end. But for a promotion and additional 30% salary increase? not worth it. I better off learning the system and get my own product to compete with the company I work for as long as it’s not violate the non-compete agreement. However, there are plenty of Jeremy Lin in coorpation that only interested in holding a job rest of their life, dispite their outstanding talent. it require a manager with company’s interest in mind rather than his/her personal agenda in the cooporation. But how many of them do?